


glory and gore go hand and hand (like me and you)

by lizardcookie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi, cw: knives blood and past violence, hello there is more evidence to support poly triad jilypad than evidence to disprove it, jilypad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24881746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardcookie/pseuds/lizardcookie
Summary: That's what it'll be, in the end. The two of them weeping over his grave. He'd be sad about it if it didn't mean that he wouldn't be the one living without them. Sirius thinks they can get on without him. He doesn't think the opposite to be true.
Relationships: Sirius Black/James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 41





	glory and gore go hand and hand (like me and you)

“No. Shit. Fuck, don’t cry. James is going to kill me when he finds out I made you cry.”

“Good,” Lily mutters in response, not bothering to wipe away tears there in her eyes. “Maybe you’d deserve it.”

They’re there, standing close, standing chest to chest in the stupid broom closet of all places, hiding, of all things. 

"Fuck,” he breaths out, wipes his hand in his hair. Hates it when he does that, like Prongs, ruining whatever order he maintains, but it helps him think. Thinking like prongs helps him think. 

Evans, broom closet, extremely pissed off Mulciber lurking outside, no Map, no cloak, no Prongs, no problem.

Problem. Regulus is out there too, the shithead. 

Problem, Evans is still crying. He hates it when she cries, her tears a barometer for what’s really going on, tell-tale oracles of worse to come, of worse things already here.

“We’re fine,” he whispers now, quieter, hand in her hair now, right there where skull meets neck, right there where he can hold onto her. Some days he feels like he needs her head more than he needs his own, needs her brain to think and see and lead, which is bullshit really, cause his hair _is_ much nicer than hers and he’s really going to regret losing that when he eventually does loose his head. Problem for another day. 

“You scared me,” Lily whispers, those tears still there, her voice giving them away. Her arms are crossed over her chest. She’s still pissed at him. 

He kisses her. On the cheek, on the forehead.

“I’m fine. You’re fine. This is fine.”

“It’s not. It won’t ever be.”

He kisses her again, on the forehead, on the cheek. “It’s not fine.”

“You scared me,” she repeats, even quieter this time, knows he’s listening. Arms uncross, her hands make space in his jacket pockets. Better now. 

He kisses her, properly that time. On the lips.

“I know.”

She kisses him back. Breathes. Thinks. 

“They’re out past curfew,” she says, like it just hit her. 

“So are we.”

“Cause of _you.”_

“Maybe if Prongs wouldn’t schedule so many extra practices—“

“Maybe if you wouldn’t go pick fights for no reason—“

“Don’t say no reason,” he cuts off, eyes suddenly sharp, tone suddenly sharp, looking down at her. “You know more than anyone there’s more than enough reason.”

Lily looks at him, eyes still red, cheeks pink, hands still in his pockets. She pulls him closer, tugging him forward, head tucked below his chin. 

“I know,” she agrees, a whisper. “I meant no reason to be alone.”

“I know,” he grimaces. He hadn’t meant to get caught alone, hadn’t meant to fight alone. “Just happened.”

She nods, the movement shaking his chin, rubbing against his jaw. She steps back, he does too. 

"You aren’t alone now.”

“Ready, then?” 

“Just don’t make me cry again.”

“Impossible.”

She kicks open the door.

\---

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You shut the fuck up. You were always shit at cuts.”

“Fuck off,” Sirius says again, but she doesn’t think he means it. Knows he doesn’t mean it. Her wand is on his arm, his jacket is off, strown on the ground with more abandon than she ever gave him credit for. his white sleeve is rolled up, ripped up, like his white white skin.

“Really, Evans,” he hisses, lifting his arm up and away from her. Admittedly he has reason to. It’s smoking. The tip of her wand is smoking where she was pressing it into his skin. “Didn’t you pay _any_ attention in Defense?”

“I outscored you,” she hisses back, tugging his arm back down to her, back down to where she can sew his skin back together. There’s tears in her eyes, and she knows he sees them. He always does. James is just better at soothing them away than he is. James is better at the softer things like that. But _he’s_ better at this, at the harder things like this, right here, right now. Her wand on his arm, his jacket off, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his cropped shirt way above his jeans, sitting cross-legged with her on the bed so she can finish her work. Her big shirt, the Stones shirt she got him for Christmas, brushes against her thighs as she works. James isn’t here yet and Sirius reached him through the mirror only long enough to know he’s alive, show that _he’s_ alive, despite rumors. Now they’re just waiting.

Sirius needs him too, like Lily. Like he can’t feel safe again til he sees him again and it’s the three of them here, home, together. That’s the only thing that makes sense these days, the three of them. Not even Moony or Wormtail make as much sense to him as Lily Evans.

So the two of them are here, here, at the flat. They’re here, where the three of them have been together, friendly and lovingly and every single thing in between, so many times before now. They’re here on the bed, Lily’s wand still smoking, his skin still burning. Smoking. But his skin is sealed there where his cousin tried to pull it open to see if his blood would run Black. 

And that’s when she hits him. Hard. She pushes his chest, he feels it there, adding to the bruises on his ribs. He falls back on his elbow, newly mended skin pulling uncomfortably. Sirius glares at lily; she knows what a sensitive thing sewn skin is. 

Her eyes hold too much water in them to be ice, but her voice does the trick, cold, sharp, precise. 

“Don’t do that again. Don’t ever do that again, do you hear me?”

“Evans--”

“No,” Lily cuts him off. “I mean it. And when _you_ tell James, because _you’re_ going to be the one to tell him, he’s going to take my side over yours for once.”

“Evans,” Sirius pleads again, there, at her mercy. Always at her mercy, sometimes at Prong’s mercy. Sometimes that’s all he feels like he is, some hopeless cause of redemption for them. 

Lily’s straddling him, here on the bed they’ve shared, here at the life they’ve lived. Her eyes are shut, her forehead crinkled, wrinkled, worried, above him. 

“Lily,” Sirius repeats, hands curling up round her hips. “It just happened.”

Arms crossed over her chest between them. “You didn’t wait for backup is what happened.”

“Ambushed."

“Didn’t run.”

“Didn’t _back down.”_

“Surviving isn’t backing down,” she says, a glare in her eye, her words sharp, like the knife that pierced him. “It’s living another day.”

“Maybe,” Sirius cedes. That’s all he can cede. This is an old argument of their’s at this point, Lily thinking this is a war of attrition and strategy, him thinking that this is all fucking pointless if you can't die for who you love and what you believe in. He doesn’t think about death all that often, but then again, maybe death is all he thinks about. He thinks about what it will mean to die a hero, to save him, to save them. He thinks about how he’d die for James and Lily before he did anything else. He thinks about the aesthetic of it all, going out like some stupid, honorable Roman solider or Arthurian knight. He thinks that nobility has never suited him (looks aside) and how James has always made the better king, she the better queen.

That’s what it’ll be, in the end. The two of them weeping over his grave. He’d be sad about it if it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be the one living without them. Sirius thinks they can get on without him. He doesn’t think the opposite to be true.

Anyway. Lily’s on his hips, and his elbows are tired, so he sits up a little straighter, leaning against the headboard, still holding her to him but his hands instead cup her cheeks, pull her in. 

“I’m okay,” he reminds her, kiss after kiss. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Alright,” she concedes this time, a whisper in the night. “But once James comes home, he _is_ going to take my side for once.”

James does come home, door barging open, practically running to look for Sirius first here in his room, not the other. he knows this routine, well practiced, well executed. Lily’s curled up at his side like her old cat used to do, eyes closed, not sleeping, waiting for James to take her side for once. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. James doesn’t care about sides except being at his, tumbling through the door like he does, a hug, arms locked around one another, hands in hair, a mess of limbs that stop belonging to one individual and take on the form that is _them,_ just the three of them, here, now, alive.

_____

 _This is it,_ he thinks. _This is what glory looks like._

Dodging a sickeningly green spell nearly cutting some of his hair off, he can’t help but think about how boring life really is without this excitement, can't help but think that this is what it means to be alive.

Sick, really, to think about that. But he’s alive, truly, truly, truly alive, feeling good and invincible dueling like this. James always said he was never happy without a few explosions in his back pocket, and he was right. 

That was years ago, when they were young. This is now, and Lily is firing hex after hex while James casts shield after shield to help their advance. It’s the three of them (like usual, like it should be, like it means the world) in a haze of smoke and he’s doing whatever he can to aid and deflect. This is a good night, one of far too few. Defeat doesn’t just seem inevitable but damn near unthinkable. Moony and Wormtail are here, flanking their rear, and for one glorious hour, it’s the five of them against the world like he once believed they could truly be forever.

And _this_ is what those first battles used to feel like when they’d first joined the Order and the war seemed more optimistic. Crashing into the flat, near hysterical with adrenaline pumping, there, there, there, alive and goddamn bleeding love. 

That’s how he understood life and what the accumulation of his cursed years on this cursed earth should be like; one big blazing descent into glory. And the thing is, when James’ mouth is on his like that and Lily’s hands are busy elsewhere on his body, he thinks this must be all part of that great big horrible destiny he’s driven himself to. 

He’d like to say he thinks about what heavy price he’ll have to pay for living so gloriously as this, curled up between them, sore and exhausted but exhilarated by morning light regardless. He’d like to say that he doesn’t lose sight of the end and all his plans of not making it to then, but he doesn’t. There in bed, he thinks about how this is what it means to be glorious. He thinks this is what it means to be young, to be here, to live and love forever.

_____

His motorcycle has torn up their yard. Rough landing and all that. Hard to be delicate when you’re trying not to pass out in the sky. 

And of course he could have Apparated here, but then he would have had to leave his motorcycle there, and he’ll rot in hell before anything happened to that bike. 

(Priorities. James, Lily, the baby, the motorbike. His jacket, him).

And so like. Yeah. Maybe he looked like some death omen, tearing up the yard, falling on his side, trying to keep both consciousness and sanity while the last bits of his pathetically executed mending charm wear off on whatever sliced open his stomach, reeking of blood and sweat and maybe guts, the cut reeking in Dark magic. He’d kept enough consciousness and sanity to fall off his bike, slump down against the ground while James ran out, hearing the bike, knowing it’s him. Paler than his dark features should have allowed, had to fireman carry him the rest of the way. Lily watched, horror stricken. The baby sat quiet in her arms, watching him with curiosity through James’ face and her eyes. Harry’s never not reached out to him the moment he crossed the threshold and shows considerable restraint tonight.

But then James has to take Harry, even though his shirt is soaked in blood, because James is really truly pathetic in Dark remedies despite years of practice, but honestly whatever Lily concocted for him is also unsophisticated. He isn’t sure it’ll hold, but his stomach is wrapped with gauze and his organs are all where they should be, so he isn’t going to critique her methods right now.

And then Harry’s crying because Sirius can't pick him up, and if he thought he hated making Lily Evans cry, he was sorely unprepared for what it would be like to make Harry cry. James scoops him up from where he was sitting with his toys (a Quidditch set, to match the broom. His gifts. His godson), promising to be back once Harry was asleep. 

“ _What_ was Dumbledore thinking,” Lily hisses, tears in her eyes when he finally confessed where he’d been. Great. He’s made both of them cry tonight. “Were you alone?”

“Counter intelligence,” Sirius tells her, ignoring her question, grimacing a little bit. He wishes it felt more like a smirk instead of an apology.

Her eyes narrow. She knows. He’s never been able to pull much over her. Still, she’s decent enough to withhold the slap he knows she wants to deliver. 

“You didn’t.”

“It wasn’t all that bad,” Sirius defends himself, huffing out a frustrated breath. It _was_ bad. And unsuccessful. And smelled horrible. Stupid Padfoot can smell a stupid amount of stupid smells. 

“I just spent an hour sewing up half your stomach, Sirius.”

“No one knew it was me. Whoever sent that curse was aiming at a poor, helpless dog just trying to snooze outside of a warehouse. Sadistic fuck.”

“You’re the sadistic fuck, sneaking around like that, asking for death. Did Dumbledore even know about this?”

“What do you think,” he mutters back, and Lily just blinks back at him, turning her head to see if the door to the nursery is closed up the stairs (it is).

“I think he’s hiding something,” Lily says, kneeling there at his side, her medicinal supplies still at a circle around her. He’s on the couch, the one where they’ve laughed too much and eaten too much and loved so much but never enough. He realizes every so often (usually when he’s been gutted like this) that he can never love enough. McGonagall used to teach them that some items, some forms of life and substance, cannot be created or multiplied. But how else can he explain what love is if not for these three Potter’s here in Godric’s Hollow, multiplying meaning?

He’s thinking ahead of himself, probably from the blood loss. Dittany should be kicking in soon, though, and Lily’s talking to him, quietly, still fussing over some bandages. 

“I was about to write you to come as soon as you were able. I think Dumbledore is hiding something. He wouldn’t give James the cloak back when he visited-- unannounced, I might add-- just yesterday. James always said Bathilda was out of it when she told stories about him, but I don’t know…” Lily shakes her head, bites her lip. He used to never see her like this, uncertain. Not in school, certainly. But this is a look she wears often now, since before the baby was born. Nothing’s been certain since. She sighs, the breath blowing her long bangs away from her forehead. “I never thought Bathilda had reason to lie, even if she is two centuries old. Something’s going on.”

Sirius grabs her hand, if only to make her stop fussing over bandages that don’t need fussing over. “Evans. What are you saying?”

“That I believe you,” she whispers, clasping his hand. “We're all being left out of something. And I don’t think James is ready to admit out loud that he believes you, too.”

Sirius clasps her hand in his, tighter than before. 

“I believe you. I trust you,” she says, voice breaking (something in him breaking, too, something fragile but weighty). “I don’t trust anyone else. And I think something bad is coming.”

“Evans,” he says, whispering too, ignoring that lump in the back of his throat that makes it hard to talk to her like this. merlin, he’s exhausted. Godric Gryffindor and all his bastard children, he’s exhausted. He can’t do another recon day like that, not if he can’t even talk to Lily without breaking down. 

“I keep getting the same readings,” she says, those tears spilling over her cheeks. “I’ve tried everything. My palm and James’ and Harry’s, tea leaves, smoke. I even found my old card set and it's the same thing, over and over and over again."

“Oh, Lily,” he hears, startled, seeing James in the doorway, no baby. James looks exhausted too, eyebrows furrowed down, moving into the living room to crouch down next to her. “How many times, love? How many times do I have to tell you that all divination looks like that right now?”

“It’s different,” Lily protests, voice getting thicker, even with his hand stroking her hair, even with the gentle kiss he planted at her temple. “I can feel the change, like something shifted and I don’t know what. Like there’s a fog that settled on everything and I can’t see past it.”

“Reading the future is always a reflection of the present until it isn't,” james soothes, not necessarily child-like, but there’s almost something naive in his repetition of the mantra his mother used to say just because she couldn’t get her Divination marks in school, either. Sirius looks between James and Lily, feeling more of that fragile thing in him crack. He’s never been superstitious and fucked off in divination as much as James did in third year, but Lily’s always been hat at it, even when she thought half of it was codswallop. She’s got a heart that’s ready to believe things just because some things (like people) need to be believed in. 

She started pulling out her old books when she got pregnant. She started reading tea leaves when Harry was born. She started reading smoke again on his first birthday, a progression, her way of navigating a world she hasn’t set foot into since the baby was born. Sirius can’t blame her for wanting to know just a little more of what’s coming next, considering she and James have barely a clue of what’s been going on outside this cottage.

It’s the one thing he can’t stand to do, make her cry, and it’s the one thing he has trouble stomaching, seeing her cry, even with James doing his best at comforting her. Sirius still has her hand captive, so he gives it a squeeze, brings it up to his lips.

(He opens her palm, looks at her short life line, which has always been this way. It’s shorter than his. He refuses to think too much on that).

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Sirius lies, honestly. “I’ve got a plan. I feel like I can figure out--”

“ _No_ ,” he hears, and Sirius is startled to learn that it’s Lily who glares red-tinted green at him.

“Lily, come on--”

“Absolutely shut the fuck up. Look at you tonight after trying to do just that!”

“I’ve been perfectly fine plenty of other times--”

“Padfoot,” James warns, weary eyes asking him to drop it. They’ve had this disagreement before. Lily hates when he goes out of his way to sniff out the traitor. James thinks the traitor isn’t one person but maybe a few loose lips, no harm meant even with lots of harm caused. Sirius thinks they both haven’t been in the field in nearly two years and haven’t seen how bad things are. 

“Do you know what would happen if you died?” Lily stands up, striding across the room, furious. He feels like it’s fifth year ago and she’s pissed at him for punching Snape in the Quidditch stands (he deserved it. Snape did, that is. Sirius didn’t think he deserved the lecture). Her arms are crossed, her voice is throaty but deadly steady. “This isn’t about James. This isn’t about me, and I know I don’t have to tell you we’d be devastated. It stopped being about just us a long time ago.”

“Lily,” Sirius says again, strained. She’s about to play her trump card and knows it, the clever girl.

“I’m not raising Harry without you. Do you understand, Sirius? Do you get that? I don’t care about the spy. I don’t give a fuck about the outcome of this war if it means we can't raise this baby with you. I’m not doing that.”

“She’s right,” James says quietly, still there at this side (where he belongs. Where he’s always been). “Really. I know you’re worried about the spy. Let Dumbledore worry about something only he can deal with. Lie low with us for a while, mate. Stay safe for a while longer. Harry misses you.”

Sirius takes a long, hard look between them. God, he misses James as his second, Lily at his side, in battle. He used to be a better solo than team duelist and that all changed because of them, and then they left and he kept fighting. _Had_ to keep fighting. For them. 

“Alright,” Sirius sighs, staring up at the ceiling, exhausted. “Only cause my bike’s gonna need so many godawful repairs in the morning.”

"Fine, then. Scoot," James smiles at him, like he used to, climbing behind Sirius on the couch to stay like that, there, warm, good. He smiles like when everything was good and hopeful, and Sirius thinks that it’s worth it. Knows it’s worth it. Knows when he finally pays that final cost, it was all worth it. 

____

But then he doesn’t know which of them paid the heaviest price.

It’s just that love always came so naturally to James, so easily, so _loud._ And it seemed to be the same for Lily, except her love wasn’t quite as loud, more like burning, like how fire was either healing or deadly. 

So it was easy to fall into that trap of old magic, that love meant more than anything. That it could be for him, too, even though he’d promised himself night after night and terror after terror as a youth that he could be above it all, simple. And maybe that’s why his love always came out a bit crooked, not loud and not cleansing but fierce, vicious, maybe even vindictive. The world had taken too much from him already and more from others and he thinks maybe, just maybe, it’s alright that his love is a violent thing. 

And it wouldn’t matter, because it’s love, and he had at one point believed that could be enough.

But then he steps over James’ corpse. And he steps over Lily’s, too. He thinks he’s going to have to buy the smallest coffin available before Harry cries, fucking alive for no fucking discernable reason, recognizing him. Sirius barely recognizes Harry; there’s blood pouring down in front of his eyes, his forehead cut up like a storm. 

His love is a violent thing, killing James and lily like it did. His love is a violent thing, trying and failing to murder Peter. What a sick joke, love, gnawing at his insides before Dementors drained the rest of what they could get out of him. Love is a violent thing, eating rats in a cave with a fugitive bird. Those rats didn’t deserve that fate and neither did the bird, but he did. After all those years, he knows he deserved worse violence than that of matted hair and starvation. He can think of one rat who deserved even worse. His love has been fundamentally flawed from his inception, a violent thing leading to violent ends, his cousin pushing him through that archway while he watched Remus watch it happen, watched Harry watch it happen. 

Is love an inherently violent act? To love a few at the cost of the whole? Sirius doesn’t have the answer for that. Sirius doesn’t have the answer for a lot of things. All he knows is that there, there at the end of all things, he thinks this is the only way. One of him, two of them, four hands waiting to be six, two souls waiting to be three. Three. A glorious thing, peaceful, lovely, loving, right.

**Author's Note:**

> you ever think about sirius black and get sad about life
> 
> and when was the last time you listened to Pure Heroine on repeat and thought about wasted youth! 
> 
> the sirius in my head is always a bit baffled by the concept of love, more so than this one but also exactly like this one. i think he's a man who only ever truly, deeply, unquestionably loved james and then learned to love lily and then made room for harry. as for remus and peter and anyone else, i am not questioning their deep and good friendship but love? that's all james and lily.
> 
> most importantly and unrelated to this story but far more relevant, here's a link to the BLM carrd to sign a petition or donate if you haven't yet or in a while: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/


End file.
